Have you ever had a situation where you needed to coordinate with a group of people and something came up at the last minute?

Maybe you were meeting a group somewhere and the plans changed at the last minute.

Maybe you’re the coach for the kids soccer team and the game gets canceled an hour before the game starts – yes the other parents are supposed to check the website or their email, but you know at least 1/2 of them won’t.

Maybe you’ve got a group of employees that are all working on an urgent project and something new comes up and they need to hear about it right away. Sure you could email, text or IM them, but sometimes they need to hear what you’re saying!

You need to ShoutNow – a new voice messaging application that lets you send a voice message out to a group, quickly, easily and cheaply.

Stephen Heiner is a client of mine and the owner of Get Smarter Prep – an ACT/SAT test preparation company (the scores you need for the schools you want). Get Smarter continues to do very well – although he did go through some challenging times in last couple of years.

But beyond the success, Stephen has created something that’s bigger. He’s created a product that his customers talk about – and go out of their way to tell others about. He’s created a large number of advocates that are the biggest key to his success.

So what’s his secret – how has he transformed his buyers into advocates that go out and sell on his behalf?

Math Monkey going Guerrilla (marketing that is…)

Not only does he have a great summer camp option with Carver Reading and Mad Science and a new Blog, but he was also just featured on Fox 4 – which is a great way to generate some buzz about your product . Anyway, check out the blog and a link to the Fox 4 video.

Brain Bucket is starting something new

My friend Toby is doing some additional definition on his business. He’s still helping business owners develop a really cost-effective web presence, but now he’s adding in the option to get the training and coaching you need to really start building that presence into a marketing tool that can drive your business.

You can read more about his approach on his new creation – the Bucket Blog! I had a chance to go to his introductory workshop last week and really enjoyed the discussion on real, practical enjoyable ways you can develop your web presence (and why you would want to). He’s going to be doing them every couple of weeks, so check out the next one on May 30th.

Start navigating with Social Radar

I had a chance to meet with Adam Coomes from Infegy a few weeks ago (we met on the KC Online Community site – you should check that out as well).

Anyway, Adam and his business partner have created a really cool product called Social Radar that can let businesses tap into the ‘buzz’ that’s in the blogosphere. As an example, if you were running the Democratic National Party, you could use the tool to see which candidate is being talked about the most, who’s talking about them, what the related keywords are and how that’s trended over time. There’s dozens of ways you could use this information to be more strategic, more informed or better equipped to market your product (or candidate…).

Anyway, Adam and Justin have created a new blog that’s going to start featuring ideas from Social Radar that they can share with the world – they’re doing some pretty cool stuff, you should check it out!

The Kansas Technology Enterprise Corporation is a state-owned corporation established to promote advanced technology economic development in Kansas. We strive to meet the technical needs of Kansas companies by providing access to individuals with expertise and state-of-the-art equipment and facilities. We even provide or help secure financing for research and development.

This is a really progressive program that most states don’t have, and it’s right here in our backyard!

One of the newer things that KTEC is doing has been the addition in the last 2 years of the KTEC Pipeline initiative – http://www.ktecpipeline.com/ . The idea is to select up to 10 ‘innovators’ every year, specifically in the technology or bioscience fields and hook them up with resources (including a $35,000 grant), special training from top of the line entrepreneurial experts and access and introductions to partnerships and capital markets.

Getting selected for the Pipeline is extremely challenging and a very big deal. This year there were over 400 applications and over 60 in-depth interviews to select the 9 winners.

The reason I’m familiar with all of this is because I’m thrilled to report that one of my clients was accepted into the Pipeline program last week. (Not because of anything I did, but because he’s a brilliant guy with some really revolutionary ideas…!).

Dan Melton is the President of NonProfit Technologies, which is a “a socially conscious for-profit think-tank that develops web-driven products and solutions to improve the effectiveness, cost-savings or impact of public-sector organizations.”

Essentially what Dan and his team are doing is creating cutting edge Web 2.0 applications that are targeted towards the public sector. Historically the public sector lags the for profit world when it comes to technology but there is a huge need and viable marketplace for the right ideas.

Luckily Dan is full of great ideas that are not only great business opportunities, but will also drive dramatic benefits to the public sector – a true win-win situation.

Congratulations to Dan and the team at NonProfit Technologies!

Stop by his site and check out some of the cool stuff he’s got going on. NPT